1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a method for implementing an installation for transporting electrical or like energy between a technical facility and locations dispersed on a platform, and also an installation implemented by this method.
Generally speaking, the term "electrical energy" is to be understood as meaning both electrical current and electrical signals and the term "transport" is to be understood as meaning both distribution from the technical facility to the dispersed locations and transmission to the technical facility from the dispersed locations; for the purposes of the present invention, it is to be understood that the expression "electrical or like energy" means electrical energy and any form of energy transportable by cable, duct or generally flexible tube, such as for example light energy in the visible or invisible spectrum, notably but not exclusively in the form of modulated signals for telephone or data processing use, transported by optical fiber or cable, mechanical energy transported by funicular transmission in a sheath (Bowden cables, for example) and pneumatic or hydraulic energy transported by flexible hoses; for the purposes of this invention, the term "cable or the like" is to be understood as meaning a cable, fiber, duct, tube, sheath or hose used to transport these various forms of energy. The present invention is therefore equally applicable to supplying regulated or unregulated electrical power to the various locations, to providing a telephone or data processing service to them, and to transmitting to the technical facility from the various locations instructions for controlling devices located in or controlled from the technical facility, for example air conditioning, lighting and blind opening and closing mechanisms, these examples being in no way limiting and being given merely to demonstrate the extensive field of application of the invention.
The term "platform" is be understood as meaning the entire floor of one story of a building, usually constructed without partition walls and intended to be divided by partition walls subsequently according to requirements, with the possibility of modifying the arrangement of partition walls; by extension, the term "platform" is to be understood as also meaning the walls, curtain walls and partition walls of this story of the building which are in principle not removable.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Providing an installation for transporting electrical or like energy in a platform of this kind during construction of the building raises specific problems related to the fact that during construction it is not generally known where the socket outlets, switches, telephone and computer jacks and the like will be located; because of this, the installation for transporting electrical or like energy implemented simultaneously with construction of the building must offer great flexibility of connection to suit the eventual arrangement of partition walls, which arrangement is also subject to subsequent modification.
Given this requirement, use is currently made of various methods for implementing installations for transporting electrical or like energy, generally limited to supplying the platform with electric power.
One known technique entails providing in the ceiling or under a false floor a fixed electrical power supply network incorporating numerous junction boxes so that connections may be made and unmade according to requirements; this technique, as described for example in German patent application DE-A-2 211 061 in the case of a ceiling installation, is costly because of the length of the electric cable required for installing a sufficiently dense network to meet all requirements, and because of the number of junction boxes that it is therefore necessary to provide; further, in the specific case of an installation under a false floor, the need to provide the false floor means that each story has to be made taller leading to increased construction costs, to increased heating and air conditioning energy consumption because of the increase in losses through the walls, since the surface area of the walls is increased, and to a reduction in the number of storeys that can be provided in a building for a maximum permissible height; also, access to the junction boxes can be difficult.
In another known technique service is provided to the platform by providing an electrical power supply baseboard on the walls to which connections may be made at will; this technique offers great flexibility of connection for locations situated directly adjacent the wall, but its use is necessarily limited to this level; also, it is costly in that the electric power supply network accommodated in the baseboard necessarily follows the longest perimeter of the platform, which requires long cable runs.
Use is also made of a technique whereby the platform incorporates socket outlets at judiciously chosen locations to meet any subsequent requirement, together with ducts protecting the cables connecting these socket outlets to the technical facility; in the frequent case where the platform is manufactured from a cast material such as concrete the socket outlets and the ducts are embedded in the concrete, and the ducts can be located under the ceiling of the floor immediately below; this systematic technique has the disadvantage of being particularly costly because of the length of the cable runs that it requires, together with the need to protect the floor-mounted socket outlets for reasons of safety; the esthetic results of this technique are also mediocre because of the visible nature of the floor-mounted socket outlets.
A variation on this technique, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,166,631, consists not in fitting the socket outlets during the manufacture of the platform but rather in embedding in the latter, made from concrete, rigid profiled members which accommodate cables in the same way as the aforementioned ducts; these rigid profiled members incorporate, regularly spaced along their length, attached appendices in the form of boxes that can be opened up through the platform for making electrical connections as and where required; the esthetic result of this technique is better than that of the technique previously referred to since only the connections actually made are visible; however, because of its systematic character, accentuated by the rigidity of the profiled members that have to be provided in large numbers to serve the platform as a whole, it has the disadvantage of requiring long cable runs, resulting in high cost; this disadvantage is all the more severe in that the connection of the rigid profiled members to the technical facility entails complex cable paths, which has the further disadvantage of considerably complicating wiring operations.
An object of the present invention is to remedy these disadvantages of the known techniques.